Novartis to Help Produce Roche’s Actemra as COVID-19 Treatment

Novartis has agreed to help manufacture Roche’s blockbuster rheumatoid arthritis drug Actemra (tocilizumab) as a COVID-19 treatment — in another pact that offers the company’s manufacturing might to help produce a rival’s COVID-19 therapies or vaccines.

Under the agreement, Novartis will help produce the active pharmaceutical ingredient for Roche’s anti-inflammatory drug, which has been evaluated in several late-stage trials as a treatment for COVID-19-associated pneumonia.

Novartis previously agreed to help CureVac produce hundreds of millions of doses of the German drugmaker’s COVID-19 vaccine, CVnCoV, from its plant in Kundl, Austria (DID, March 5). That deal will take effect only if CureVac’s vaccine receives conditional marketing authorization from the European Medicines Agency, which could happen as soon as this spring or early summer.

In January, Novartis announced it had signed an initial agreement with BioNTech to provide manufacturing capacity at its site in Stein, Switzerland. Under that deal, Novartis would fill the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine’s bulk mRNA active ingredient into vials starting in the third quarter of this year. — Jason Scott